Thursday, 30 July 2009

I consider this belt bag to be one of my best works so far - even more astonishing that I always forgot to post it here...The design of the bag itself goes back to the time when we made stuff for reenactment, so it is a classical "Viking" belt bag. But the belt bags we made at this time were much easier and less decorated.

The main-pattern on this pouch is an own one, it is displaying the fettered Fenrir. Also the knotworks and tri-weave are drawn and tooled free-hand - I never use these ready-made stamps.

This was a commissioned work for a friend of mine - though I had a lot of artistic freedom.

The Sax-blade is made from some carbon steel (nothing special) and is the only thing I could not manufacture myself so I got it from a friend. So do not ask me questions about the blade - my answers will be quite unsatisfying ;)

The handle is made from some very interesting materials.The first part is some usual deer antler. But the way I used it shall remind a bit on the shape of bronze age swords.Then there are the intermediate pieces of leather.The next part is oak - moor oak to be precise. This means, this piece of wood could easily be around 5000 years old...After the next piece of leather, there is a piece of oak again.But a special one again!Some of you may know the story about the Donar-Oak (Donareiche) which was a sacred place for the Chatti and other ancient germanic tribes of central Germany.In the year 723 Bonifatius had the oak felled in an attempt to convey the superiority of the Christian God over Thor and the native Germanic religion.However, and this part is not told by common history pages, the germanic people did not renunciate directly after christianisation and planted a new oak which stood there until the mid of the last century. Only few people know about the place where the remains of this ancient tree can be found.And this handle is made of it's wood!If you don't believe this (I swear that I do it!) it may just be a piece of a very very old common german oak...

The sheath is made from veg tanned leather as all my leather works - the viking design is an own one and the Wolfangel is part of the family crest of my friend who will get this wonderful piece...

Monday, 20 July 2009

This piece was a commissioned work, look here for the original design: [link]I tried to be close to the original and to restrict my artistic freedom to the parts that left no other possibilities.It was really fun to do this piece though it was kinda tricky, too - just send me more challenges like that!

Friday, 17 July 2009

I already began with this work almost one year ago and then completely forgot about it.When it came back to my consiousness a few days ago, I decided to finally finish it and I think it turned out quite good. It is not the most inventive design of all times - this Gotland pattern is used by many (leather-)artists. However I like it's vintage and even a bit battered look. It looks as antique as possible, I would say.

Thursday, 9 July 2009

I put a bunch of older wristbands with original norse or celtic patterns into my Etsy-store today. I found them while cleaning my workshop and thought they would be to be forgotten. Even if they are not what I would do today, they are still very nice...

Wednesday, 8 July 2009

This one is a funny story - first of all - Have you ever seen a Thor's Hammer which was poorer than this one?Ok, maybe you have, but it is definetely a quite awful one.However, the story around it is worth telling.

A few years ago, at the very first beginning of my work with leather, I wasn't dealing with all these nice tools and carvings - I was decorating into the leather with a kind of branding tool or -pen. Often I did this freehand without a tracing and the work shown above is one of the results. Afterwards I scanned it - as all my works at that time - and took the ugly Hammer-design again and again, also improving it a bit over the time.I completely forgot about this crappy (well at least crappy from todays point of view) design until I came across an online shop selling bracers with just that ugly hammer on it!!! I was laughing and I am not a person who cares that much about copyright issues, but I also was shocked that just an awful work as that one develops an autonomus life... Probably this will be my heir to the world?!

At the moment I have to spend some more time on the internet than I prefer - however it has to be done, because I need some funds... And therefore I need to sell some of the stuff I regularly and proudly post here, on my DeviantArt-page or wherever.And for sales on the internet, you need traffic - so do me a favour and look at my Squidoo-site: http://www.squidoo.com/wodenswolf and if you like it, give me a good rating! This could help me, at least a bit!

This work is also already a few months old, due to the fact that I did not craft that much during that time. I was simply too busy with everything around the first litter of my wolfdog female, fostering the pups and so on. But as I did not post this very special one yet, at least not on this blog, I thought it would be time.

It is a new design of bracers, similar to the wristbands I posted in march. The design is my own and I consider the main-pattern as one of my best ornamental works.It is very close to the animals of the Mammen style and as the name of the bracer says it - it is the "hell-hound" Garm who is depicted. In the norse mythology this awful dog guards the entrance to the underworld, called "Hel" in ancient times.